Small and medium-sized businesses are currently facing a ‘data tsunami’ forced on them by regulatory preservation and compliance rules that dictate how they must manage electronically stored information. What’s the best strategy for managing this complex problem?

The paperless office will probably never happen. But while paper still clutters our desks, it’s the electronic paper trail that is proving harder for most businesses to manage. What should you do with the paper and electronic business records your business accumulates each year? What has to be kept year after year, what can be destroyed or disposed of as soon as possible?

The IRS needs this, state law says that, federal laws say something else. And, depending on the industry in which you work, the latest compliance regulations demand that you preserve certain information.

Once you figure out WHAT to keep, you need to decide HOW to keep it. Should you scan the paper documents into the computer? Or should you print out all the electronic correspondence and documents? As you weigh these decisions you need to factor in the cost of off-site paper storage, and the amount of hardcopy versus softcopy you will need to retain.

Once you have established the best policy for documents, you’ll need to next think about email, IM, voice messages, and even SMS messages. What to keep? And for how long? What can be purged immediately? These new forms of correspondence can generate far more volume than ‘regular’ correspondence.

Accessibility is another dimension to the problem - what you will have to produce for auditors or researchers if you have an IRS audit, litigation discovery or human resource issue. This may require you to go through paper files for prior years and electronic files from this time forward. The cost of such a discovery process of audit needs to be managed, both financially and in terms of its impact on your business’ productivity.

Storage Guardian has been managing the preservation and retention of business-critical electronic records of companies for the past 10 years. As a result, we’ve developed some guidelines that apply to most businesses – but make sure to check with a legal expert familiar with the specific federal /state legislation for your industry.

Business Documents <1 Year:

• Un-solicited correspondence by mail, fax, email, instant messaging

• All recorded voice messages, unless part of a contracted relationship

Business Documents for 1 Year minimum after IRS filing:

• Correspondence with customers, vendors (mail, fax, email, instant messaging)

• Purchase orders, receiving documents

• Requisitions, stockroom transfers

• Duplicate deposit slips

Business Documents for 3 Years minimum after IRS filing:

• Administrative and fiscal correspondence (mail, fax, email, instant messaging)

• Employee applications, employment records after termination

• Employee time records

• Internal reports, Internal audit reports

• Bank statements, reconciliations

• Petty cash records

• Expired insurance policies

Business Documents for 6 years minimum after IRS filing:

• Payroll records, including pensioner payments

• Employment tax records

• Time books

• Accident reports, claims

• Accounts payable ledgers and schedules

• Accounts receivable ledgers and schedules

• Notes receivable ledgers and schedules

• Inventories of products, materials, supplies

• Cancelled checks (actual or images)

• Sales records

• Plant cost records

• Department copy purchase orders

• Invoices to customers

• Invoices from vendors

• Expense analysis and expense distribution schedules

• Subsidiary ledgers

• Travel and entertainment records

• Vouchers for payment to vendors, employees

• Vouchers registry, schedules

• Expired leases, contracts (including recorded voice messages, electronic correspondence for contract relationship)

• Cancelled stock and bond certificates

• Expired option records

Business records that should be kept in perpetuity:

Federal law does not require records be kept ‘forever’ but the following are retained ‘indefinitely’ for other reasons.

• Audit reports from CPAs and accountants

• Cancelled checks / funds transfers for important payments (especially tax payments)

• Cash books, charts of accounts

• Contracts, leases currently in effect (including recorded voice messages, electronic correspondence for contract relationship)

• Corporate documents (incorporation, charter, by-laws, etc.)

• Documents substantiating fixed asset additions

• Deeds, property records

• Depreciation schedules

• Financial statements (year-end)

• General and private ledgers, year-end trial balances

• Insurance records, current accident reports, claims, policies

• Investment trade confirmations

• IRS revenue agents’ reports

• Journals

• Legal records, correspondence and other important matters

• Minutes of meetings held by directors and stockholders

• Mortgages, bills of sale

• Property appraisals by outside appraisers

• Retirement and pension records

• Tax returns and worksheets

• Trademark and patent registrations

Storage Guardian and its trusted IT partners provide small and medium-sized businesses with off-site migration, protection, preservation and management of their electronic business records. With simple monthly ‘pay for the volume of storage used’ programs—priced in the cents per gigabyte—compliance with retention guidelines is easily implemented.

Through the use of the Internet, all your electronic business records can be stored off-site in data centers and be accessible and recoverable within minutes, via the Web. Instead of placing hardcopies into cardboard banker boxes, and then shipping these boxes off-site for storage, it can all be done electronically. This approach also obviates the continual addition of costly in-house data storage infrastructure to manage the ‘data tsunami’ of ageing business records.

Financial institutions, governments, healthcare companies and all forms of small and medium-sized businesses use storage Guardian’s data centers. The centers are certified to the financial industry’s SAS 70 Type I/II standards. This means all business records are encrypted before going off-site into storage to ensure access is restricted to the owner — both while in transit and when in storage.

As more and more of your business is computer-based and involves electronic records, now is the time to consider how you will handle your ‘data tsunami.’ Look to Storage Guardian and its partners the solution to this problem — contact us today and learn how we can get you started on the road to secure electronic business record management.

Here’s a video that explains how you can define a cost-effective approach to online backup: tiered storage.

Thousands of companies still rely on archives stored on old magnetic tapes, risking a total loss of their critical data. Here’s how you can migrate information stored on Symantec Backup Exec tapes to modern, secure online backup technology.

“We’ve seen tapes stacked in basements and hidden in dusty storage closets, and it makes you wonder what will happen when someone needs to restore that information,” says Dave Minns, client services manager at Storage Guardian. “What we’re telling small-business owners, and the resellers and managed service companies that work with them, is that the time is right to migrate that information from those dodgy tapes to the safety of online backup. The economics make sense, and they’re assured that they conform to best practices in data storage.”

Storage Guardian aims to help hundreds of small and medium-sized businesses transition from antiquated and unreliable magnetic tape backup systems to the latest online and cloud backup technology. The company, which specializes in offering SMBs enterprise-grade online backup, has launched a ‘Dust-Off Your Tapes’ campaign to help drive awareness of the perils of relying on vulnerable magnetic tapes as a long-term archival medium.

Migrating from tape to Storage Guardian’s Asigra-based online backup service is easy. Storage Guardian’s software recognizes Symantec Backup Exec and VERITAS Backup Exec in Microsoft Tape Format and converts them into a Backup Lifecycle Management archive package that can be integrated into an online, tiered-storage system. Storage Guardian’s tiered-storage approach automatically selects the most cost-effective online storage strategy, and makes all data instantly accessible.

With more than ten years of experience and hundreds of satisfied customers, Storage Guardian’s remote data backup service has established itself as a dependable provider of enterprise-grade online backup technology for smaller companies. What sets it apart from the many low-cost alternatives in the market are online data backup features optimized for businesses that depend on servers (nowadays, that’s most SMBs):

— Its tiered-storage online backup model includes a) a local backup of first-generation data; b) a highly available second tier of online backup; c) a third tier of near-line backups of mature data (typically backups that have aged past 90 days).

— Convenience and flexibility are two crucial considerations when a major data restore is needed after a catastrophic server failure. Storage Guardian offers the ability to perform a “bare metal restore” to a completely different computer.

— To save time, the initial backup is performed on an external drive that is shipped to the Storage Guardian. Similarly, if a major restore of a large amount of data is needed, Storage Guardian can overnight an external drive containing the restore data.

— Storage Guardian’s ultra-secure online backup technology uses AES 256-bit encryption PLUS hardware authentication. Information to be backed up is de-duplicated (deduped), compressed and encrypted before transmission to Storage Guardian’s SAS-70 compliant datacenter.

— Storage Guardian can also backup and restore individual mailboxes and contacts from MS Exchange and Outlook.

How Tiered Storage online backup saves you money

Late one night, the call comes in. There’s been a disaster at your office building and you’d better get over there quickly! As you drive to the office, you go over a mental checklist: Is the insurance paid up? If the power is down, how will I keep the business running? Without our data, applications and servers, how will we service clients? What about employees and vendors?

You review the time you spent last year with a disaster planning consultant. She was referred to you by your service provider, who encouraged you to meet as a first step toward developing a comprehensive business continuity contingency plan.

The consultant had outlined several disaster scenarios, each with progressively more impact on our ability to continue to run our business. Her recommendations resulted what had seemed like an iron-clad service level agreement — but would it be enough for this disaster?

If you’ve been in this situation, you probably already know whether your plan was sufficient or not. If you haven’t, here are some questions asked of clients by disaster planning consultants.

1. Ensuring continuity of production data. Most businesses cannot afford to lose any of this, but if you’re not sure, ask yourself how much you could realistically rekey after a disaster. The last 24 hours? The last 4 hours?

2. Hard drive crash. How long can you afford to be down? Could the backed-up data be redirected to a new location, and how might applications be redirected to the new location?

3. Loss or destruction of a laptop, netbook, smartphone. Should the data on the lost device be encrypted to protect from fraud or intrusion? Are there any data or programs that must be backed up whenever there is a wireless connection to a network?

4. Loss or destruction of a workstation. What steps should be taken to ensure that the affected employee can continue to be productive? Is there data stored locally on that workstation that should be stored on a central server and backed up? Are there special applications associated with that workstation’s operating system?

5. Loss or destruction of a database server. How long can can the business run without a server? Assuming online backups were in place, how much data would have to be restored? And at what rate of recovery? How often should database snapshots be taken in order to minimize the time to rekey lost data? Are there ways to recreate prior keying? Should we plan for a bare-metal restore to a totally new machine?

6. Destruction or forced closure of the office. How to ensure that all electronic records are protected?? Can the essential computer systems and the most current business records be quickly recreated at an off-site data center to ensure total business continuity?

What we’re driving toward, in most cases, is a comprehensive business continuity protection based on online data backup to a sophisticated data archival and retrieval system. Computer systems are backed up almost immediately, over the internet, whenever new data is entered. Therefore, in the event of a disk crash or workstation loss, rekeying will be minimized. In the event of a total loss, the entire computer system can be quickly recreated in a virtual data center so that your business can continue to operate while you work with insurance companies and claims adjustors.

What Storage Guardian can offer

Storage Guardian and its network of managed service providers help businesses prepare for disasters. With a full suite of software tools designed for all forms of data protection and with expertise on crafting data disaster recovery solutions, any business can be prepared for all possible scenarios of computer disasters.

Our tools perform continuous data protection backups, immediate backups when wireless devices connect, database structure and content restorations, email mailbox reconstruction, unique data file backups, and support today’s virtualized environments:

— FIPS 140 NIST certification, featuring password rotation that provides the option of automatically generating and changing passwords at random for specific user accounts so unauthorized persons cannot access the account or the data.

— Built-in data de-duplication, encryption and lifecycle management to minimize bandwidth and storage needs.

— Agentless software operation that does not require any agents to be purchased or installed on the existing or newly added systems under protection.

— The software reaches out over the network to perform agentless backup of all leading physical and virtual operating systems, applications, and databases, using industry standard protocols and programming interfaces.

— Full support for 64-bit computing.

Backing up to “The Cloud”

For the ultimate peace of mind, Storage Guardian Cloud Continuity can offer a virtual business continuity data center, which gets you back into business almost immediately. When disaster strikes, your mission-critical data can be instantly populated in a virtual business continuity data center.

Storage Guardian Cloud Continuity drastically reduces the operational impact of a natural disaster by restoring a single-server backup set from high availability storage to the cloud in just minutes. Users then have full access to all applications and data while the physical server is replaced, at which time normal operations can be resumed.

With Storage Guardian Cloud Continuity service in place, a business can:

— Minimize operational downtime

— Continue business-critical activities while repairing its physical environment

— Gain access to restored data in the cloud from anywhere in the world

— Restore the data from the data repository into the cloud at LAN speed

Learn more about how we can help, and set up a disaster planning consultation: here.

Hurricane season might be behind us but it is always a good time for business owners and IT managers to review their current disaster recovery plan. This is especially critical for small and medium-sized businesses since they often don’t have a full-time IT crew, focused on matters such as offsite backups, online data backup strategies, or how to restore IT services after a major catastrophe.

“You can minimize the business impact of a natural disaster with online data backup to an offsite location — and nowadays that means the cloud,” says Dave Minns, client services manager at Storage Guardian. “Companies with a cloud-based business continuity plan can recover from a disaster in minutes. And keep in mind that every minute you’re down is a major ding in your company’s credibility with customers, partners and suppliers.”

Storage Guardian’s ‘Jumpstart Cloud Continuity‘ program — limited offer.

Storage Guardian is making it easy for a business to implement cloud continuity by providing free initial data upload via USB drive for the first 50 companies that sign up. The USB drive, which is shipped direct to the customer, eliminates the need to perform a time-consuming initial backup via the Internet. Click here for more details on the Jumpstart program.

Comprehensive business continuity protection has historically been something only large corporations could afford. The required investment in expensive, redundant hardware (both onsite and in remote locations) seldom provided suitable return or a 100% reliable restore of critical data. However, the advent of ‘cloud computing’ has made the provision of dynamically scalable and virtualized resources more available, including storage. Now, with Storage Guardian Cloud Continuity, even small businesses can quickly recover their IT infrastructure after a major disaster, ensuring their business does not miss a beat.

Storage Guardian Cloud Continuity drastically reduces the operational impact of a natural disaster by restoring a single-server backup set from high availability storage to the cloud in just minutes. Users then have full access to all applications and data while the physical server is replaced, at which time normal operations can be resumed.

With cloud continuity service in place, a business can:
- Minimize operational downtime
- Continue business-critical activities while repairing its physical environment
- Gain access to restored data in the cloud from anywhere in the world
- Restore the data from the data repository into the cloud at LAN speed

Storage Guardian’s latest cloud continuity technology supports online backup and disaster recovery for virtualized computing environments (Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware ESX), and no hardware investment is required.

About Storage Guardian
Storage Guardian delivers business continuity protection and information lifecycle management. Storage Guardian is used by small and midsize businesses, enterprises, and multiple-platform LAN computing environments that want to safeguard their critical business data in a secure, off-site location. Its remote backup service is the culmination of a decade of intense research and software development and represents a superior alternative to tape-based data recovery systems. All Storage Guardian’s solutions are based on Televaulting technology from Asigra, a recognized leader in enterprise online backup. The company is also developing a select network of authorized VARs to service the off-site backup and fast data recovery needs of companies located throughout North America. www.storageguardian.com.

We recently chatted with Eric Hall, VP/CTO at AMAAX in Dublin, Ohio. A Storage Guardian VAR partner, AMAAX continues to increase the data stored with us, so we thought Eric’s observations would be of interest to other VARs and MSPs.

How would you describe Amaxx?
Amaxx was started in 1996 as a dial-up ISP reseller. We’ve since evolved into a facility-based telecom company that focuses on small to mid-size businesses, offering them an outsourced IT department. The company has attracted a loyal following with professional services businesses such as doctors, lawyers — we’ve optimized our services for these businesses.

What range of services do you offer?
We provision local and wide area networks, private networks and public internet access, provide onsite computer services, and offer a range of managed services. We’re partnered with some of the top names in IT so we are able to deliver the highest level of support — before, during and after the sale.

Before you work with them, how are most of your clients handling backups?
Most new clients have been using manual backup approaches — tape or disk. Our experience is that these approaches are generally inefficient and unreliable. Human error is certainly one problem – often the person who is actually handling the manual aspects of tape backups is not very experienced. And the backup media is rarely stored offsite or in a secure area. The other aspect is that SMBs are often overwhelmed by the volume of data that needs to be backed up. One example: a company was doing a full tape backup every night—it took hours—yet they didn’t have a trained IT person. It looked like a disaster waiting to happen.

How do you present online backup services to them?
The first thing we do after engaging with a client is an audit so we can understand their current data protection and backup processes. Nowadays, we always propose that they switch to online backup, and clients are pleased to learn that this is a cost-effective approach. We point out that it involves no capital expenditure, will eliminate the manual labor involved with tape or disk methods, and will require no more offsite storage of tapes.

What we’re offering our clients is a very compelling service that enhances our set of managed services. If a client experiences anything from accidental file deletion to catastrophic server loss, we can have them up and running in 48 hours.

What’s it like to work with Storage Guardian?
We view Storage Guardian as a key partner because they enable us to offer disaster recovery to our clients. Their service is rock-solid and generates a good supplemental income for us. Right now, we’re evaluating how we can boost our bottom line by migrating some of our clients’ data to a tiered-storage model, and we’re looking forward to the features offered by the Asigra 9.0 release.

TORONTO, CANADA, June 11, 2009–Storage Guardian (www.storageguardian.com), the company that specializes in advanced online backup solutions for small to medium-sized businesses, is hosting a webinar in conjunction with Windows IT Pro Magazine. Aimed at small-business IT managers, and VARs and MSPs who sell into the small and medium-sized business sector, this free webinar from industry experts will provide tips on how to manage the ‘data tsunami’ faced by businesses.

WHEN: Thursday, June 18, 2009, 12:00 pm EDT  Duration: 60 minutes
REGISTER: http://tinyurl.com/nrtgpa

“You’re Faced with Data-Retention Mandates and Critical Data That’s Aging—What Do You Do?”

In this era of stringent regulatory compliance, many organizations must retain data well beyond the date at which it ceases to be operationally important. In a sense, companies need a data ‘attic’ because, as data ages, IT must institute a process that identifies and migrates ‘legacy’ data from costly online storage to more cost-effective storage.

The data retention strategy you implement must provide for fast restoration of the data, as mandated by regulatory requirements, and do so without placing a major burden on budgets or manpower.

In this webinar, we will examine the benefits of applying cloud storage coupled with a tiered-storage approach to data lifecycle management, and show how these techniques can satisfy the demands of your business.

SPEAKERS:

David Chernicoff
David Chernicoff is a technology consultant with a focus on the mid-market space, Windows IT Pro Magazine senior contributing editor, founding technical director for PC Week Labs (now eWeek), former lab director for Windows NT/Windows 2000 Magazine (now Windows IT Pro), and formerly chief technology officer for a network management tools ISV. David has been writing computer-related feature and product reviews for more than 20 years and is co-author of a number of operating system books, ranging from the Windows NT Workstation: Professional Reference (New Riders Publishing), to the Microsoft Windows XP Power Toolkit (Microsoft Press), as well as over a dozen e-books on topics ranging from network switching topologies to production FAX technology. These days he splits his time between writing, problem solving for his varied clientele, and consulting on keeping a few small datacenters up and running.

Dave Minns
As client services manager at Storage Guardian, Dave Minns provides the company’s MSP and VAR partners with excellent training and ongoing support, and ensures that their clients’ needs are met and exceeded.

Storage Guardian’s tiered-storage online data backup technology:

• Reduces cost of storage infrastructure
• Includes web search and retrieval in the restore and recovery process
• Archives data to a common source
• Offers automated or on-demand destruction of data
• Provides audit documentation that confirms destruction
• Provides channel partners with a recurring annuity

Cloud computing is getting a lot of attention in the media. Rightfully so: as Internet access bandwidth capacities go up, and the cost goes down, it’s tempting to consider just how many IT services can take advantage of this scalable approach to computing.

Applying the latest in cloud storage principles to the tedious task of data retention offers some tangible benefits: a reduction in capital expenditure on local storage, and of course the manpower to manage backups. And it can eliminate the ‘human error’ component of managing local data retention locally. But with a client’s critical data at risk, you need a bullet-proof strategy before you ditch those tape drives.

The strategy that we recommend for our VAR and MSP partners focuses on establishing a data lifecycle for their clients’ data. In this era of stringent regulatory compliance, many organizations must retain data well beyond the date at which it ceases to be operationally important. So we work with them to define a ‘data lifecycle’. This enables us to institute a process that identifies and migrates ‘legacy’ data from costly online storage to more cost-effective storage. And that’s where cloud-base storage offers a cost-effective solution.

The trick is understanding how to manage data through its lifecycle, as it ages from operationally critical, to legacy/stagnant, and finally to destruction. An automated tiered-storage backup approach can manage these lifecycle transitions, and satisfy the demands of healthcare, financial services and other highly regulated and data-intensive businesses.

VARs, MSPs and trusted IT advisors can create revenue opportunities with cloud-based online data protection services, including these new tiered-storage services. Adding online backup services to your line-up means you can offer your clients peace of mind with respect to their business continuity protection, while creating long-term relationships and multi-year annuity revenue streams for your business.

To learn more, sign up for our May 28 webinar with SMB Nation: LINK

Tomorrow, Dave Minns, our trusty client services manager, is presenting at the ASCII “Reseller Success Summit” in Washington DC. His mission is to help our channel partners turn stagnant data into new revenue streams. Come on down if you’re in the area! The event is free to VARs and MSPs.

WHAT: ASCII Group Reseller Success Summit
WHERE: Hilton Washington Dulles Airport
WHEN: Thursday, April 23, 2009. 8:00 AM – 5:30 PM

Attend Dave’s seminar and you will learn:
• why is there a ‘data tsunami’ on its way to most businesses
• how to identify SMB customers that need guidance with backup strategies
• the fundamentals of the data lifecycle management
• why most business information is ‘stagnant’ and how to identify it
• how to transition your clients to a ‘tiered storage’ approach to offsite data protection

Sign up here. This event is free to resellers, VARs and MSPs.